Bridging Policy and Research on Aging in Canada: Recognizing an Anniversary, Realizing an Opportunity

This article was inspired by an anniversary and prompted by an exceptional opportunity. At the 2007 annual scientific and educational meeting of the Canadian Association on Gerontology, a plenary symposium recognized the 10th anniversary of a special joint issue of the Canadian Journal on Aging and Canadian Public Policy (CJA/CPP) on Bridging Policy and Research on Aging in Canada. Symposium presenters included researchers Janice Keefe and Robyn Tamblyn (who had contributed papers in the 1997 volume) (Tamblyn, 1997; Keating, Fast, Connidis, Penning and Keefe, 1997), Anne Martin-Matthews (who had co-edited the volume with the late Ellen M. Gee) and several policy makers, including Margaret Gillis (who at the time was director of the Division of Aging and Seniors at the Public Health Agency of Canada).

The symposium’s purpose was to reflect on how the bridge linking research and policy had changed (or not) over the decade, what successes could be considered over the interval, what challenges remain, and to provide a current “state of the union” of the research–policy interface. In 1997, it was suggested that “policy-makers are recognizing the need for evidence-based decisions, and in the process, reinforcing the power of the paradigm of research as the basis for knowledge” (Gee, 1997, p. v). Have the events of the ensuing decade proven this to be true in terms of the link between research and policy on aging in Canada?

This issue has assumed particular importance again this spring with the release of the Report of the Special Senate Committee on Aging, “Canada’s Aging Population: Seizing the Opportunity.” The Special Senate Committee on Aging had been appointed in 2006 to examine the implications of an aging society in Canada, in terms of such issues as promoting active living and well-being; housing and transportation needs; financial security and retirement; abuse and neglect; health promotion and prevention; and health care needs, including chronic diseases, medication use, mental health, palliative care, home care, and caregiving.

While making a wide range of recommendations, the Report specified five primary framework recommendations, relating to active and healthy aging: (a) financial security, (b) aging-in-place and integrated health and social care services, (c) of most relevance to this discussion, the development of a National Integrated Care Initiative, (d) a National Caregiver Strategy, and (e) a National Pharmacare Program. At the time of our writing this article, departments throughout the federal government, and particularly in branches of Health Canada, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, and in the Canadian Institutes of Health Research are scrutinizing these recommendations and developing responses to them, to be considered by the federal government as it addresses “the appropriate role of the federal government in helping Canadians age well” (Special Senate Committee, 2009, p. vii).

This article brings together the perspectives of researchers who have focused on two of the primary framework policy areas identified in the Report of the Special Senate Committee on Aging: prescription medications (Tamblyn) and caregiving (Keefe), with a policy maker (Gillis) and a scientific director of a key national funding agency for research on aging in Canada (Martin-Matthews), to consider a decade of challenges and opportunities not only specifically in relation to medications and caregiving but also in the wider context of the research–policy interface.

The Context: Bridges Old and New

In reflecting on the “then” and “now” of the bridge between research and policy on aging in Canada, it is important to acknowledge the context within which the 1997 joint special issue of CJA/CPP was developed. It was by no means an isolated venture.

A key impetus was the influence of the Seniors’ Independence Research Program (SIRP) of Health Canada, which existed between 1993 and 1997. SIRP’s mandate was to promote national research initiatives with a balanced emphasis on the social, economic, and health determinants of independence for today’s and tomorrow’s seniors, with the goal of improving the quality of evidence for optimizing social and health policy for seniors. In 1996, SIRP organized a...